by David Drake
She must have been using the port’s starship communications system because her high-output transmission blanketed all frequencies. Every floor of the terminal building was ablaze, but those were merely administrative offices. The actual control room was in a sub-basement, armored against the chance of a starship crash.
Fencing Master turned left, away from the base of the terminal. Padova dropped the car twice onto the sodded lawn to scrub off inertia that wanted to carry them into the burning building. The other Highball cars were braking in roostertails of red sparks as their skirts skidded on concrete. The terminal was a tower of flame, lashing the ground with pulses of heat.
“Sir, what should I do!” Padova said. They were moving slowly south along the face of the building, crushing ornamental shrubs under their skirts. Foghorn and Fancy Pants followed, while Lieutenant Messeman’s cars had halted on the other side of a wing-shaped entrance marquee which extended twenty meters from the front entrance.
“All Slammers units,” a familiar voice growled. “This is Regiment Six, troopers. Cease fire unless you’re fired on. Under no circumstances fire on the starships that’ll start landing shortly. Hammer out.”
Deseau tracked a man running across the pad to the left. He didn’t shoot, but he was touching the trigger. Huber hooked a thumb to back him off, then said, “Highball, we’ll laager a hundred meters back the way we came. Infantry in the center of the circle.”
He looked at the plot the C&C box suggested, approved it, and concluded, “Six out.”
That was far enough from the terminal building that they wouldn’t broil, though Huber wanted to keep Highball reasonably close to its objective until somebody got around to ordering them to move. The Lord knew when that’d be, given what the Colonel and his staff had on their plate right now.
The eight vehicles crossing the pad from the west slowed as they approached the terminal. Huber’s eyes narrowed: one was a command car, a high-sided box built on the chassis of a combat car to hold far more communications and display options than could be fitted into a C&C box. Mostly they were staff vehicles, though Huber knew a couple of line company commanders preferred them to combat cars.
The shooting had probably stopped, though it was hard to say because munitions continued to explode. That wouldn’t end for days, not with the number of fires burning across the huge port. You could get killed just as dead when a truck blew up as you could by somebody aiming at you….
That reminded Huber of casualties. He checked the readout on his faceshield and saw to his pleasant surprise that all the personnel were green—infantry included—except for a cross-hatched icon on Foghorn. “Three-one, what’s your casualty?” he said.
“Six, the right gun blew back and burned Quincy both arms,” Sergeant Nagano replied. “We got him sedated and covered in SpraySeal. He’ll be all right, I guess, but he won’t be much good in the field for a few months. Over.”
“Highball Six,” broke in another voice before Huber could reply, “this is Regiment Six. We’re joining your laager but leaving you in local control. Out.”
Huber felt a momentary jolt, but that was ingrained reflex; his conscious mind was far too exhausted to be concerned. “Roger, Six,” he said. “Break. Highball, spread the laager to accommodate eight more cars. The command group’s joining us. Highball Six out.”
The eight vehicles with Colonel Hammer, five of them from K Company, idled toward Highball. The cars of Huber’s original command reformed as the eastern half of a circle instead of the complete circuit. Instead of steering Fencing Master straight to its new location and rotating the bow out, Padova drove the car sideways. She was bragging, but Huber was too wrung out to call her down for it.
“Guess they didn’t have a walkover like we did,” Deseau said as he gave the newcomers a professional once-over. Three of the combat cars had holes in their plenum chambers; one was shot up badly enough that its skirts dragged. It probably couldn’t have kept up with the rest of the unit if they hadn’t been crossing such a smooth, hard surface. “Nobody even shot at us that I saw.”
“They shot at us, Frenchie,” Learoyd said. He tapped the bulkhead beside him with the knife he was using to scrape his ejection port.
Huber leaned forward to look past the trooper. Three projectiles, each separated from the next by a hand’s breadth, had dimpled the iridium inward. The third was deep enough that the armor had started to crack.
“From the bunker when we got close,” Learoyd explained; he sounded apologetic. “I guess I shouldn’t’ve quit shooting when something blew up inside.”
The impacts must’ve been audible in the next county, but Huber hadn’t been aware of them, nor Deseau either it seemed. Aloud Huber said, “No harm done, Learoyd. Nobody’d guess their compartmentalization was that good, and it’s not like there wasn’t anything else needing attention.”
The laager was complete with two meters between adjacent cars: tight, but giving them room to maneuver fast if something unexpected happened. The right wing gunner of the car next to Fencing Master raised his faceshield and shouted over the idling fans, “How’s your leg, Lieutenant?”
“Sir!” Huber said. He’d expected Colonel Hammer to be in the command car. “Sir, my leg’s fine, I guess, but I haven’t been using it much except to stand on.”
Huber’s left leg ached like a wall was leaning on it, but the rest of his body wasn’t much better. His skin itched and the slickness where his clamshell rubbed over his hipbones was either popped blisters or blood. In the morning, that might matter; right now, Arne Huber was alive and that was good enough.
Huber’s AI pulsed a warning on his faceshield. The task force was still under combat conditions, and a pair of aircars were approaching from the northeast a thousand meters up. The cars’ tribarrels weren’t on air defense, and the AI thought maybe they ought to be.
“They got running lights on, El-Tee,” Deseau said, swinging his gun onto the aircars manually. “They’re not trying to sneak up on us, but maybe they’re just too smart to try what wouldn’t work.”
“Put that gun on safe, trooper!” Colonel Hammer roared. Then he snapped his faceshield down and continued, “All Slammers units, do not shoot. Under no circumstances harm the incoming aircars. They’re bringing Solace representatives to treat with us! Six out.”
The aircars hovered a kilometer from the perimeter of Port Plattner. Hammer continued an animated conversation with someone on a push that didn’t include Highball Six. After nearly a minute’s discussion, the aircars mushed toward the laager together. The command car’s rear door opened; Major Pritchard stepped out of the vehicle.
Colonel Hammer nodded approval and swung his legs over the coaming of his fighting compartment to stand on the plenum chamber. He looked at Huber, grinned, and said, “Come along with me, Lieutenant. We’re going to take the surrender of the Republic of Solace.”
The two squads of infantry tilted their skimmers on end and stacked them in groups of three between the combat cars of Highball section. Sergeant Tranter swung down a cooler from Fancy Pants since the infantry’s supports were back with the hogs.
The troopers looked more concerned with the Colonel and his operations officer in the center of the circle than they were with the crackling destruction that covered most of the near distance. They’d seen destruction more often than they’d been this close to the Colonel, after all.
The aircars hovered for a moment, then landed a hundred meters out from the laager. Hammer grimaced and snapped to Pritchard, “Get ’em in here, Major. Do they think we’re going to walk over to them?”
Huber wasn’t sure he could walk that far. His left leg had been numb till he dropped from the plenum chamber to the ground. That shock had seemed to drive a hot steel rod straight up from his heel to the hip joint. His knee didn’t want to bend, and every time he moved the rod burned hotter.
Pritchard spoke into his commo helmet. He must have had a link to the aircars through his command vehicle, beca
use after a moment they lifted and crawled toward the laager in ground effect. He smiled tightly to Hammer and Huber, saying, “The gentleman from Nonesuch was concerned that the terminal might fall in this direction. I assured him that the shell of a ferroconcrete building will remain standing after it’s burned itself out.”
His grin grew even harder. “I’ve got a lot of experience with that, of course. We all have.”
“Right,” said Hammer. “That’s why they hire us.” He glanced at Huber and added, “You’ve met Mister Lindeyar already, haven’t you, Lieutenant?”
“Him?” said Huber, shocked out of his torpor. He wasn’t sure he’d heard right; or if he had, that his brain hadn’t taken a shock during the battle that was making him remember things that’d never happened. “There was a Lindeyar at Benjamin, but what’s that got to do with Solace?”
A starship was dropping slowly. It was still at high altitude but the effort of supporting its mass in a controlled descent made it pulsingly noticeable. Hammer’d mentioned ships landing, so Huber supposed it part of the plan. Somebody’s plan, and no concern for a line lieutenant.
“Sigmund Lindeyar is the Nonesuch representative for all of Plattner’s World, not just to the United Cities,” Major Pritchard said, sounding detached. “Quite an important man back home, I gather.”
Hammer spat on the dirt at his feet. “Yeah,” he said, releasing the catches on the right side of his clamshell. “And if you don’t believe us, just ask Lindeyar himself.”
The aircars landed again, this time a few meters short of the bows of the combat cars. The slick-finished limousines reflected the surging firelight like pools of oil; by contrast, Foghorn and Fancy Pants were hulking gray boulders, scarred by the ages.
The starship continued to drop, balanced on the repulsion of two self-generated electromagnetic fields. Violet corona discharges danced across the heavens, crackling and roaring. Huber glanced at it, then frowned as he looked higher in the sky. A second starship was descending, and he thought a third waited above the second.
“El-Tee, there’s a couple more aircars coming up from the south,” Deseau said over Fencing Master’s intercom. “I don’t guess there’s a problem—they’re responding with Regimental IFF—but I figured I’d mention it.”
Huber nodded to Deseau. Learoyd had the receiver cover of the left wing tribarrel raised to adjust the feed mechanism. The crew of a CO’s vehicle caught a lot of extra work, which bothered Huber. Neither Deseau nor Learoyd seemed to notice, let alone care.
And it wasn’t like either one of them wanted to be platoon leader.
A group of military and civilian personnel were getting out of one of the aircars. Among them was an attractive—
Via! The attractive young woman was Daphne Priamedes, and the senior officer whom she’d bent to help to exit was her father, Colonel Apollonio Priamedes. Huber’d never expected to see either one of them again.
Lindeyar had arrived in the other vehicle, alone except for three bodyguards. Huber looked at him and smiled wryly. How many people have I killed in the last two days? And not one of them anybody I knew, let alone disliked.
“Colonel?” Huber said aloud. “There’s two more aircars coming from the south. I guess you’ve already got that under control, but—”
“But you thought you’d make sure I had the information,” Hammer said with an approving nod. “Right, I do.”
He gestured to the southern sky. “That’s the UC delegation,” he said. “They’re our principals on this contract so they need to be here.”
The first starship settled onto the far end of the pad, close by the ship that had brought the Waldheim Dragoons. The new vessel was about the size of the one that had held an entire brigade of armored cavalry. Its sizzling discharge ceased, but the concrete continued to vibrate at a dense bass note.
Lindeyar straightened the fall of his jacket and strode into the laager past the combat cars. His bodyguards waited beyond the circle.
The civilians who’d arrived in the other vehicle huddled for a moment. The old man wearing a fur stole and cap of office directed a question at Colonel Priamedes with a peevish expression.
Priamedes snapped a reply and walked after Lindeyar, his daughter at his side. Daphne kept her face blank, but Huber could see from the way she held herself that she was ready to grab her father if his body failed him. Exchanging looks of indignation, the four civilians followed.
The two aircars coming from the south landed with a brusque lack of finesse; one even bounced. Huber leaned back slightly to get a better look between two vehicles of Lieutenant Messeman’s platoon. He’d been right about what he thought he’d seen: the four civilians getting out of the aircars were members of the UC Senate whom he’d seen before when he was assigned to duties in Benjamin, but White Mice were driving and guarding them. Their battledress was as ragged as Huber’s own, and one trooper’s plastron had been seared down to the ceramic core.
The man in the fur cap glared at Hammer. “You sir!” he said. “I’m President Rihorta. Colonel Priamedes tells me you’re the chief of these hirelings. May I ask why it’s necessary to hold these discussions in such a, such a—”
At a loss for words, he waved a hand toward the chaos beyond. His sleeves were fur-trimmed also. As if on cue, a fuel tank in the vehicle park exploded, sending a bubble of orange fire skyward.
“—a place?”
“Well, Mr. President …” Hammer said, putting a hand under his breastplate to take some of its chafing weight off his shoulders. “If I needed a better reason than that I felt like it, I’d say because it’ll convince you that you don’t have any choice. I could burn all of Bezant down around your ears even easier than I took the spaceport that your survival depends on.”
“Bezant is a civilian center, not a proper target of military operations,” Colonel Priamedes said in a tight voice.
“Is it?” Hammer snapped at the Solace officer. “I could say the same about Benjamin, couldn’t I?”
He waved his hand curtly. “But we’re not here to discuss, gentlemen,” he went on. “We already did all the discussing we needed to with those—”
He pointed to the bullet-gouged hull of the combat car he’d arrived in.
“—and with the hogs. We’re here to dictate the end of the war on such terms as seem good to our principals.”
The UC senators walked between the combat cars with as much hesitation as the Solace delegation had shown. One of them was coughing. The air reeked of smoke and ozone, so familiar to Huber that he hadn’t thought about it till he watched the civilians’ grimaces and shallow breaths.
A woman of thirty wearing battledress of an unfamiliar pattern entered the laager with the UC civilians. She nodded to Hammer, then stood at parade rest and watched the by-play with eyes that were never still.
“Masters and mistresses,” Hammer said. His tone was even, but Huber noticed he gripped his breastplate fiercely enough to mottle his knuckles. “You politicians probably know each other—”
The delegations exchanged wary glances, even faint nods. They had more in common with one another than they did with the soldiers and war material surrounding them.
“—and you know Mister Lindeyar—”
The Nonesuch official looked around the gathering, his face without expression.
“—but you may not know Mistress Dozier, who’s the Bonding Authority representative with responsibilities for the contracts here on Plattner’s World.”
The woman in battledress said, “Good day. I’m here solely as an observer, of course. My organization has no interest in the negotiations between principals except to see that all parties adhere to the contracts which we oversee.”
The second starship was in its final approach. Hammer raised his hand in bar. President Rihorta started speaking anyway, but the overwhelming CRACKLE CRACKLE CRACKLE penetrated even his self-absorption after a moment.
When the sound and dazzling corona died away, Sigmund Lindeyar said,
“Rather than draw these proceedings out unnecessarily, I’m going to take charge now. Nonesuch has been subsidizing the mercenaries which the Outer States have hired for this conflict. In fact some eighty percent of the charges have come from our coffers—”
“What!” said President Rihorta. “But you’ve been insisting we raise port duties to upgrade the facilities!”
“You traitorous scum,” Colonel Priamedes said in a quiet voice, stepping toward Lindeyar. Daphne tried to stop him. Huber placed himself in front of the Solace officer and held till weakness and Daphne’s efforts forced Priamedes back.
His knees started to buckle. Huber caught him and shifted around to his right side, continuing to support Priamedes while Daphne held her father’s other arm.
“I’m scarcely a traitor, Colonel,” Lindeyar said with a chuckle. He fluffed the lapel of his jacket. “I’ve been quite successful in advancing the interests of my nation …which is Nonesuch, you will recall.”
The UC delegates were whispering among themselves. Lindeyar fixed them with his cold eyes and said, “Now as for you gentlemen—”
The word was a sneer.
“—the first thing you need to know is that my government has withdrawn its financial support. I’ve already informed the Bonding Authority—”
Mistress Dozier nodded agreement.
“—that as of this moment, Nonesuch will no longer pay the wages of the mercenaries employed on Plattner’s World. Therefore unless the UC and its local partners are capable of paying those charges by themselves, the war is over and all the mercenaries will go home immediately. Can you pay, gentlemen?”
The four UC senators gaped at Lindeyar. Minister Graciano said, “Good Lord, man, of course we can’t. But why would we want to? We’ve won. This is what we’ve been hoping for all along!”
“Mister Lindeyar,” Major Pritchard said, “there was discussion about transferring the contract of Hammer’s Regiment to Nonesuch directly.”
Lindeyar met the unspoken question with a wintry smile. “Was there?” he said. “Perhaps there was. In the event, however, my government has decided to depend on its national forces for defense of its new concession here on Plattner’s World.”